


Time, and Change

by charlottechill



Category: The Magnificent Seven
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-08
Updated: 2009-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 30 years later; electric lights and motorcars, running water and movie theaters brighten the landscape of early 20th-century America. In this very short story, Chris Larabee contemplates that, and more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time, and Change

**Author's Note:**

> Old West, series canon

Old age wasn't so bad, really--meant he wasn't dead after all, and Chris Larabee had come to a point many years ago where he no longer sought the reaper. He no longer even dressed to suit the black-hearted fiend. Even with the aches and pains of life and the world rolling on, changing and speeding up as much or more than his own body slowed, he was happy to be alive, still. To witness the miracles all around him, from steam engines to gaslights to telephones, modern cities and motorcars. Movies.

Buck loved the picture shows.

Chris had been on some of them movie sets, laughed with Wyatt Earp and been proud to be a lesser-known. He couldn't have stomached all that false flattery for a hard-won life that no one who hadn't been there could ever understand. He couldn't stomach the attention, even though Buck had seemed to enjoy it aplenty, at the time.

California hadn't been for him. No, he'd ridden west like a rising tide, leaving marks on the land he swept by. After only a few months in Los Angeles, where motion pictures had taken the harsh life he'd known and made it something else, something sterile and false and fashionable, he had ebbed back, settling down in Tucson not far from where he'd lived much of his life. And yet so goddamned far from it, with the movie houses and motor cars.

They didn't even keep horses anymore--no need. JD had landed himself a real lawman's job, working in Denver, wearing a uniform and raising his young'uns, preparing boys and girls alike for the college education he had run from. JD's children would see a better life than JD had, a future filled with such miracles as Chris couldn't even have imagined, a score of years ago. JD's past had faded, been painted over with pretty lies.

JD and Nathan were the only two, of all seven of them, to have settled and raised children. JD and Nathan were the two named in Chris's will, after Buck. Not that he had much, but it was something, help for their futures.

Buck had singled JD out, and Nathan, if he knew, wouldn't mind. There had always been a bond there.

The screen door slammed behind him. Ten years ago he would have spun around, but his body no longer suffered quick movement so early in the morning. Chris had known Buck would be out soon enough when he'd heard the percolator bubbling through the kitchen window, and seen the kitchen light snap on. Electricity still thrilled Buck, and toilets that flushed, water that came when you called it. It cost them nearly a dollar a month, but Buck didn't mind the waste. He'd never much minded waste on his comforts or his friends.

Chris smiled a little and turned his head, finally pushed up off the porch railing.

"What?" Buck frowned.

Chris shook his head. He should have known Buck would be the kind to bathe every single day, if opportunity arose. He should have known Buck would succumb to all those tools of vanity, oiling and coloring his hair even still.

Chris missed the mustache sometimes, but mostly didn't; marks from Buck's mouth on many parts of him had oftentimes been hard to explain.

"Pretty morning, ain't it?" Buck said, all quiet as he handed across a coffee cup.

Chris felt his eyes crinkling, which they did so easily these days, and nodded his head. "Barn ain't hardly no use no more."

"Keep the truck in it," Buck said easily.

Which was true enough. More storage shed than animal housing these days, the barn had lost its use, wearing away like history. Like Chris himself.

"You all morbid again this mornin'?" Buck asked, though he didn't need to.

"No."

A hand touched his back, down low where his shirt tugged out of his trousers. "You sure?"

Turning, meeting Buck's eyes, noting the lines and the damage wrought by age and the bright blue that had never faded, Chris nodded. "Just thinkin' we ain't long for this life. That everything we knew, it's pretty much gone."

At that, Buck laughed out loud, the sound still as strong and youthful as it had ever been. "Good you ain't feelin' morbid," he chuckled.

"Fuck you."

Buck still laughed, but bumped his shoulder hard enough that his coffee sloshed in the cup. "I wouldn't say no."

"What?"

"Been awhile."

It hadn't, not really. Or maybe it had. Not in the last week or two, at least. It might even be longer than that "Incorrigible," he said anyway.

"What, you didn't know that by now?"

Chris knew. Just like Buck knew Chris could think all these dark-seeming thoughts without meaning anything dark at all. Just like Buck knew Chris didn't much care about the barn, but was beginning to hanker a bit for more comforts of town and city life. Shorter walks to cars and stores. Less responsibility than all this acreage meant.

"Make a date with you," he offered.

Buck eased on in, turned him a little, and brought their mouths together. No raging fire, not after age and so many years, but sparks still flew, still high and hot enough to catch and stir the heat between them that only Buck could satisfy. He tasted sweet, like the sugar in his coffee. He felt strong still, even as age had thinned and lined him. Chris dropped his hand down low, lower.

Yeah. Buck could still get ready for something in the morning.

"You lookin' for that date right now?" he asked, his fingers just barely stroking the half-hard bulge in Buck's trousers.

"Wouldn't say no, but..."

He didn't say yes. They'd wait, take care of chores, smile at each other. Anticipate it a little, and curl up together in the afternoon. Seemed like their habit of recent years, when they got round to this.

Seemed like a good one.

"All right." He turned back to the view and the aging barn, and smiled.

\- the end -


End file.
